The murder of Hannah Williams was an English case in which a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Hannah Williams (May 1986 – c. 21 April 2001), was murdered after going missing during a shopping trip on 21 April 2001. Robert Howard, a convicted sex offender suspected of other murders including in his native Ireland, was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to life in prison for her murder. Disappearance On 21 April 2001 Hannah Williams told her mother that she was going window shopping in Deptford, but never returned home. For a long time it was presumed that Williams had run away, and the search was not helped by the fact that a friend reported seeing her long after she had probably been killed. Discovery of body and conviction of killer Williams's body was discovered on 15 March 2002 at a cement works in an industrial area of Northfleet, Kent, beside the Thames estuary. Initially it was speculated that the body was that of Danielle Jones, who had been missing from East Tilbury in Essex since 18 June 2001, but Williams's clothing led to a correct identification. The discovery of Williams's body also overlapped with the investigation into the disappearance, and later murder, of Milly Dowler from Surrey, who vanished on 21 March 2002. Robert Howard, a convicted sex offender who had known Williams since 1999, was arrested on 23 March 2002, eight days after her body was found. At his trial at Maidstone Crown Court in October 2003, Howard was found guilty of raping and murdering Williams, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. No minimum term was reported to have been recommended by the trial judge, and there have been no reports of a minimum term subsequently issued by the High Court. Robert Howard Robert Lesarian Howard, of Wolfhill, a village in County Laois, Republic of Ireland, was born on 20 April 1944. Howard was first convicted of burglary at the age of 13, and at 19 was convicted of attempted rape of a 6-year-old girl in London. He served prison terms for attempted rape and strangulation in London and for burglary and rape in Cork, and was a police suspect in several disappearances of women and girls, including that of Jo Jo Dullard of Callan and Annie McCarrick, a New York tourist in County Wicklow. In 1993, the same year as McCarrick's disappearance, Howard was convicted of unlawful carnal knowledge of a